Testimony before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations
Subcommittee on Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs
by Regan E. Ralph, Executive Director
Women's Rights Division, Human Rights Watch
International Trafficking of Women and Children

February 22, 2000

My name is Regan Ralph, and I am the Executive Director of the Women's Rights Division
of Human Rights Watch. It is a pleasure to be here today, and I appreciate the attention this
committee is devoting to the growing human rights problem of trafficking in persons.

Trafficking in persons -- the illegal and highly profitable transport and sale of human beings
for the purpose of exploiting their labor -- is a slavery-like practice that must be eliminated. Human
Rights Watch has been involved in documenting and monitoring this serious human rights violation
for many years. We have reported on the trafficking of women and girls from Bangladesh to
Pakistan (Double Jeopardy), from Burma to Thailand (Modern Form of Slavery), and from Nepal
to India (Rape for Profit). We have also conducted extensive research regarding other incidences
of trafficking, including the trafficking of women from Thailand to Japan and from Eastern Europe
and the former Soviet Union to Bosnia. Reports resulting from these investigations are forthcoming.

The number of persons trafficked each year is impossible to determine, but it is clearly a
large-scale problem, with estimates ranging from hundreds of thousands to millions of victims
worldwide. The State Department estimates that each year, 50,000-100,000 women and children
are trafficked into the United States alone, approximately half of whom are trafficked into bonded
sweatshop labor or domestic servitude. Trafficking is also a truly global phenomenon. The
International Organization for Migration has reported on cases of trafficking in Southeast Asia, East
Asia, South Asia, the Middle East, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, South America, Central
America, and North America. And press reports in the past year have included accounts of persons
trafficked into the United States from a wide variety of countries. In August 1999, a trafficking ring
was broken up in Atlanta, Georgia that authorities believe was responsible for transporting up to
1000 women from several Asian countries into the United States and forcing them to work in
brothels across the country. Four months later, a man pleaded guilty to keeping five Latvian women
in involuntary servitude in Chicago. He had recruited the women from Latvia with promises of
$60,000-a-year wages. But when they arrived, he pocketed most of their earnings and forced them
to work by confiscating their passports, keeping them under constant surveillance, and threatening
to kill them and have their families murdered if they disobeyed him.

Trafficking patterns

In Human Rights Watch's documentation of trafficking in women, we have found that while
the problem varies according to the context, certain consistent patterns emerge. Furthermore, while
our research has focused on the trafficking of women and children into the sex industry, reporting
from numerous credible sources shows similar patterns in the trafficking of women, men, and
children into forced marriage, bonded sweatshop labor, and other kinds of work. In all cases, the
coercive tactics of traffickers, including deception, fraud, intimidation, isolation, threat and use of
physical force, and/or debt bondage, are at the core of the problem and must be at the center of any
effort to address it.

In a typical case, a woman is recruited with promises of a good job in another country or
province, and lacking better options at home, she agrees to migrate. There are also cases in which
women are lured with false marriage offers or vacation invitations, in which children are bartered
by their parents for a cash advance and/or promises of future earnings, or in which victims are
abducted outright. Next an agent makes arrangements for the woman's travel and job placement,
obtaining the necessary travel documentation, contacting employers or job brokers, and hiring an
escort to accompany the woman on her trip. Once the arrangements have been made, the woman
is escorted to her destination and delivered to an employer or to another intermediary who brokers
her employment. The woman has no control over the nature or place of work, or the terms or
conditions of her employment. Many women learn they have been deceived about the nature of the
work they will do, most have been lied to about the financial arrangements and conditions of their
employment, and all find themselves in coercive and abusive situations from which escape is both
difficult and dangerous.

The most common form of coercion Human Rights Watch has documented is debt bondage.
Women are told that they must work without wages until they have repaid the purchase price
advanced by their employers, an amount far exceeding the cost of their travel expenses. Even for
those women who knew they would be in debt, this amount is invariably higher than they expected
and is routinely augmented with arbitrary fines and dishonest account keeping. Employers also
maintain their power to "resell" indebted women into renewed levels of debt. In some cases, women
find that their debts only increase and can never be fully repaid. Other women are eventually
released from debt, but only after months or years of coercive and abusive labor. To prevent escape,
employers take full advantage of the women's vulnerable position as migrants: they do not speak
the local language, are unfamiliar with their surroundings, and fear of arrest and mistreatment by
local law enforcement authorities. These factors are compounded by a range of coercive tactics,
including constant surveillance, isolation, threats of retaliation against the woman and/or her family
members at home, and confiscation of passports and other documentation.

Government efforts to combat trafficking in persons have been entirely inadequate. In many
cases, corrupt officials in countries of origin and destination actively facilitate trafficking abuses by
providing false documents to trafficking agents, turning a blind eye to immigration violations, and
accepting bribes from trafficked women's employers to ignore abuses. We have even documented
numerous cases in which police patronized brothels where trafficked women worked, despite their
awareness of the coercive conditions of employment. And in every case we have documented,
officials' indifference to the human rights violations involved in trafficking has allowed this practice
to persist with impunity. Trafficked women may be freed from their employers in police raids, but
they are given no access to services or redress and instead face further mistreatment at the hands of
authorities. Even when confronted with clear evidence of trafficking and forced labor, officials focus
on violations of their immigration regulations and anti-prostitution laws, rather than on violations
of the trafficking victims' human rights. Thus the women are targeted as undocumented migrants
and/or prostitutes, and the traffickers either escape entirely, or else face minor penalties for their
involvement in illegal migration or businesses of prostitution.

These policies and practices are not only inappropriate, they are ineffective. By making the
victims of trafficking the target of law enforcement efforts, governments only exacerbate victims'
vulnerability to abuse and deter them from turning to law enforcement officials for assistance. By
allowing traffickers to engage in slavery-like practices without penalty, governments allow the
abuses to continue with impunity.

Trafficking in Women: Case Studies

Drawing on Human Rights Watch research, I will provide a few specific examples that
illustrate the pattern outlined above. I will then offer recommendations for measures the U.S.
government can take to combat this modern form of slavery and provide redress for its victims.

Thailand to Japan

From 1994 to 1999, Human Rights Watch carried out an extensive investigation of the
trafficking of women from Thailand into Japan's sex industry. We will be publishing a report on
trafficking into Japan later this year. We interviewed numerous trafficking victims directly, and
received information regarding many more cases from local advocates and shelter staff in Japan and
Thailand. Our findings indicate that thousands of Thai women are trafficked into forced labor in
Japan each year, their rights violated with impunity as the Japanese and Thai governments fail to
respond adequately to the problem.

Statements by the Thai and Japanese governments have made clear that they are well aware
of these abuses. However, this has not been translated into effective measures to provide women
with the means to protect themselves from abuse or to seek redress for violations. When Japanese
authorities raid establishments that employ trafficked women, the women are arrested, detained in
immigration facilities, and summarily deported with a five-year ban on reentering the country. This
punitive treatment is applied regardless of the conditions under which the women migrated and
worked in Japan, and even when there is clear evidence of trafficking and/or forced labor.
Trafficking victims have no opportunity to seek compensation or redress, and no resources are
provided to ensure their access to medical care and other critical services. Moreover, their traffickers
and employers face little fear of punishment. If arrested at all, they are charged only with minor
offenses for violations of immigration, prostitution, or entertainment business regulations.

The Thai government has adopted laws and policies aimed to combat trafficking in Thai
women and assist victims in returning home. However, law enforcement efforts have so far proved
ineffective, and women's vulnerability to trafficking persists. Many women continue to lack viable
employment opportunities at home, and, at the same time, have no information about how to protect
their rights overseas. In addition, the government has adopted overly broad policies aimed to prevent
"potential" trafficking victims from traveling abroad. For example, the passport applications of
women and girls ages fourteen to thirty-six are subjected to special scrutiny, and if investigators
suspect that a woman may be going abroad for commercial sexual purposes, her application is
rejected. This policy, however well-intended, trades one human rights problem for another by
discriminating against women seeking to travel and limiting their freedom of movement. It also
makes women who want to migrate even more dependent on the services of trafficking agents,
because it is difficult for women to obtain travel documents by themselves. Finally, the Thai
government makes no effort to assist trafficked women in seeking redress.

The women we interviewed described the shock, horror and, often, powerlessness they felt
when they discovered that contrary to their promises of lucrative jobs, they were saddled with
enormous "debts" and would not receive any wages until these amounts were repaid. This would
require months -- or even years -- of unpaid work under highly coercive and abusive conditions.
Those who had been promised jobs in factories or restaurants faced an additional blow when they
learned from their employers or coworkers that their debt had to be repaid through sex work.

The women had been recruited for work in Japan by friends, relatives, or other acquaintances,
who told them about high-paying overseas employment opportunities. The recruiters introduced
them to agents who handled their travel arrangements and hired escorts to accompany the women
to Japan. In some cases, the women became suspicious about their job offers during -- or even
before -- their travel overseas, but once their agent had initiated the arrangements, they were closely
supervised and felt they could not safely change their minds. Upon their arrival in Japan, the women
were delivered to brokers who sold them into debt bondage in the sex industry. Most worked as bar
"hostesses," entertaining customers at the bar and accompanying customers to nearby hotels to
provide sexual services. While in debt, they could not refuse any customers or customers' requests
without their employers' permission, and they often endured violence and other abusive treatment
at the hands of both customers and employers. The women were also subjected to excessive work
hours and dangerous health risks -- including the risk of contracting HIV and other sexually
transmitted diseases.

Excerpts from a few of their stories provide an idea of the slavery-like conditions they
endured. In Thailand, Lee(1) had an alcoholic and abusive husband and three young children she was
struggling to feed. When a recruiter offered to find her a job as a sex worker in Japan, she agreed.
She told us, "I knew there would be some debt for the airplane ticket and all, but I was never told
how much." She found out after she arrived in Japan and was taken to a room by a broker to be sold.
In her words, "There were lots of women and people came to choose women and buy them. I was
bought on the third day, and told that my price" -- and therefore her debt -- "was 380 bai
[approximately US$30,000]. After three or four days of working at the bar, I realized how much 380
bai was. The other girls said to me, 'That's a lot of debt and you're old. You'll never pay it off.'
Then I prayed that it would only take six or seven months to pay it off, and I went with all of the
clients I could."

Human Rights Watch also interviewed a woman who was promised a job in a Thai restaurant
in Japan, but instead was taken to a bar where the other Thai "hostesses" told her she would have
to work as a prostitute. She recalled, "They told me there was no way out and I would just have to
accept my fate. I knew then what had happened to me. That first night I had to take several men,
and after that I had to have at least one client every night."

Another woman we interviewed was released from debt after eight months of grueling,
unpaid labor. According to Khai, "I had calculated that I must have paid it back long ago, but the
[bar manager] kept lying to me and said she didn't have the same records as I did. During these
eight months, I had to take every client that wanted me and had to work everyday, even during my
menstruation." Despite the terrible and coercive conditions, including physically abusive clients,
Khai did not try to escape. Her manager had threatened to resell her and double her debt if she
"made any trouble," and forbade her from going outside without supervision. The manager had also
confiscated her passport, and, Khai explained, "Without my documents I was sure I would be
arrested and jailed by the police."

Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union to Bosnia

In March 1999, Human Rights Watch traveled to Bosnia to document the incidence of
trafficking in women from Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. We interviewed trafficking
victims, local and international officials, and local advocates. We also looked through police and
court records and went to Ukraine to interview staff from La Strada, an NGO which has assisted
many women returning from Bosnia. Our research indicated that since the end of the war in Bosnia
and Herzegovina, thousands of women had been trafficked into Bosnia for forced prostitution.

At the time of our investigation, Bosnia was under the authority of a combination of local
and international agencies. Our conversations with local police, representatives from the Joint
Commission Observers, and members of the International Police Task Force indicated that all of
these officials were well aware of the trafficking problem. They knew that foreign women were
working in slave-like conditions across Bosnia, unable to leave the brothels. Nonetheless, little was
done to prevent the trafficking of women into forced prostitution, or to provide redress or protection
for victims. We even found evidence that some officials were actively complicit in these abuses,
participating in the trafficking and forced employment of the women and/or patronizing the brothels.

The women had traveled from Belarus, Moldova, Ukraine, Romania, and Hungary, lured by
promises of legal work and safe passage. When the women arrived in Bosnia, brothel owners seized
their passports and subjected them to slavery-like practices. They were treated like chattel, often
resold from brothel owner to brothel owner, and the promises of good incomes turned out to be lies:
instead of being able to remit money home to their families and children, the women found
themselves forced to work without wages. As Vika told Human Rights Watch, "They tricked me.
Everything was fine at first. But when we wanted to leave, the owner sold us for 1500 DM
[approximately US$900]. The new owner told us that we had to work off three more months. He
said he would sell us to another man." Most of the women had agreed to jobs in the sex industry,
but when brothel owners refused to pay them, some women refused to work, incurring violent
punishment. According to one woman interviewed by Human Rights Watch, "Every time I refused
to work, they beat me."

When authorities encountered trafficked women during brothel raids, they treated them like
criminals, compounding the human rights abuses they had endured at the hands of their traffickers.
The women were arrested, fined for their illegal immigration status and their illegal work as
prostitutes, and then deported. And in early 1999, "deportation" in the Bosnian context -- a country
without an immigration law -- translated into being dumped across a border. From the Federation,
women found themselves dumped in Republika Srpska. And vice versa. This pseudo-deportation
scheme only facilitated the trafficking cycle. Women dumped across the internal borders could be
quickly picked up and re-sold.

Burma to Thailand

Trafficking in persons is not a new phenomenon, and research conducted by Human Rights
Watch in the early 1990s revealed similar patterns of human rights abuses, as well as similar levels
of indifference -- and even outright complicity -- on the part of law enforcement officials.

More than six years ago, Human Rights Watch reported on the trafficking in Burmese women
and girls into brothels in Thailand. We interviewed thirty trafficking victims in Thailand, and
obtained many additional interview transcripts from a local NGO. Nyi Nyi's case was typical: She
was recruited from Burma at age seventeen by a friend who had worked in Thailand. She had no
idea what type of work she would do, but she agreed to go. When she met the agent, he gave her
15,000 baht (approximately US$600), which she gave to her sister. Then the agent sent Nyi Nyi to
a brothel in northern Thailand, in a truck driven by a police officer. When Nyi Nyi arrived, she
learned that the 15,000 baht from the agent was a "debt," which she would have to repay through
prostitution. Nyi Nyi could not speak Thai, did not know where she was in Bangkok, and was
always afraid of being arrested by the police. She never dared to talk to anyone, and she was
relieved that the police who came to the brothel as customers never chose her. After about a year
of working almost every day, she was told that she had repaid her debt, but did not have enough
money to pay for a return trip to Burma. So she continued to work, and a short time later she was
arrested during a brothel raid. The police initially promised that she would be taken back to Burma
in a few days, but instead Nyi Nyi was sent to a reformatory for prostitutes, where she was confined
for the next six months.

Nepal to India

In 1995, Human Rights Watch released another report on trafficking in persons, this one
based on interviews with women and girls who had been trafficked from Nepal to India. Some were
tricked by fraudulent marriage offers, others were sold by relatives, and a few were abducted. All
ended up in the hands of trafficking agents who brought them to brothels and sold them into debt
bondage. One of the women we interviewed explained that her husband had left her, and when a
neighbor told her about an Indian man who wanted to marry her, she agreed. A meeting was
arranged, but instead of eloping, her "fiancé" drugged her and took her to a brothel in India. At the
brothel, she was told that she had to work to pay off her purchase price of Rs.20,000 (approximately
US$666). Each day she was forced to sit in a room in the brothel with the other women, and when
a customer chose her, she could not refuse; those who tried were beaten and verbally abused. After
working for ten years, serving nine or ten customers a day, she was still in "debt." She told us,
"Nobody was allowed to leave after four years like people say they are." Finally she met a Nepali
man at the brothel, and with his help, she managed to escape.

U.S. Policy -- Recommendations

Human Rights Watch commends the U.S. government for prioritizing trafficking in persons
as a domestic and foreign policy concern. Senator Paul Wellstone has played a key role in
mobilizing government efforts to combat trafficking in persons in a way that promotes and protects
the rights of women and particularly trafficking victims. His leadership led to new legislation
requiring the Department of State to increase and improve its reporting on trafficking in its annual
Country Reports on Human Rights Practices. We hope that additional attention to this issue will
help to close the gaps in the U.S. State Department's reporting on this subject. The report on Japan
released last year, for example, alluded to the mistreatment of illegal workers, but trafficking and
debt bondage were not mentioned, and the report asserted that "there are presently no known cases
of forced or bonded labor" in Japan.

In 1998, President Clinton identified trafficking in women and girls as a "fundamental human
rights violation," and tasked the President's Interagency Council on Women with the challenging
task of developing and coordinating government policy on this issue. Currently, the U.S.
government is involved in several important initiatives. These include participation in the
negotiation of a protocol on trafficking supplementing the Convention against Transnational
Organized Crime; implementation of foreign aid programs designed to prevent trafficking, assist
victims, and prosecute traffickers; and consideration of legislation in the U.S. Congress against
trafficking in persons.

As it participates in efforts to design and implement multilateral approaches to combating
trafficking in persons, Human Rights Watch urges the U.S. government to promote human rights,
and especially women's human rights, as the cornerstone of such efforts. This is of crucial
importance in the negotiations for a protocol against trafficking in persons supplementing the United
Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime. The final shape of this protocol will
have significant implications for the effectiveness of multinational efforts to prevent and prosecute
trafficking abuses, as well as for the protection and redress available to trafficking victims.

The United States is also involved in a number of other important discussions that will
strongly influence the ways in which governments respond to trafficking in persons. In March of
this year, the United States is co-hosting the Asian Regional Initiative Against Trafficking in Women
and Children (ARIAT) in Manila, where Asian and Pacific nations will discuss national action plans
and develop a regional strategy. At the G8 summit in Okinawa in July, the Group of Eight will have
the opportunity to continue their discussions about joint efforts to combat trafficking in persons.
Last month, Human Rights Watch sent an observer to a symposium on trafficking in persons in
Tokyo that the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs sponsored in preparation for the G8 discussions.
We hope that President Clinton, in his public and private remarks at the Okinawa summit, will
stigmatize governments that are complicit in trafficking or tolerate trafficking. He should also use
this opportunity revisit the plan of action to combat trafficking in persons adopted by the G8
Ministerial Meeting in Moscow last October, encouraging governments to enact domestic legislation
necessary for the effective investigation and prosecution of those involved in trafficking and pressing
for the inclusion of concrete measures to protect the rights of all trafficking victims.

The United States should take advantage of all channels and opportunities to promote a
human rights approach to trafficking based on the following recommendations:

Defining "trafficking" to encompass trafficking into all forms of forced labor and servitude
-- in any occupation or labor sector -- including trafficking into forced marriage. The
definition should also be limited to situations involving coercion, in recognition of men and
women's ability to make voluntary decisions about their migration and employment, with
coercion understood to include a full range of abusive tactics used to extract work or service.

Actively investigating, prosecuting, and punishing those involved in the trafficking of
persons in countries of origin and destination, and imposing penalties appropriate for the
grave nature of the abuses they have committed. Particular attention should be paid to
evidence of collaboration by government officials in the facilitation of trafficking abuses.

Exempting trafficking victims from prosecution for any immigration violations or other
offenses that have occurred as a result of their being trafficked.

Ensuring that trafficking victims have the opportunity to seek remedies and redress for the
human rights violations they have suffered, including compensation for damages, unpaid
wages, and restitution. This requires guaranteeing victims' access to legal assistance,
interpretation services, and information regarding their rights, and allowing all trafficked
persons to remain in the country during the duration of any proceedings related to legal
claims they have filed.

Taking strong precautions to ensure the physical safety of trafficked persons. This includes
witness protection measures for those who cooperate with law enforcement efforts and
asylum opportunities for those who fear retaliation in their countries of origin. Countries of
origin, transit, and destination must also cooperate to ensure the safe repatriation of trafficked
persons, working together with non-governmental organizations to facilitate their return
home.

Protecting women's rights and addressing the inequality in status and opportunity that makes
women vulnerable to trafficking and other abuses. States should support policies and
programs that promote equal access to education and employment for women and girls.
They should also provide women with information about their rights as workers and how to
protect these rights overseas. Programs should be designed and implemented with the
cooperation of local non-governmental organizations.

There is increasing evidence that trafficking is on the rise in the United States as well. To
effectively respond to the trafficking of persons into this country, we urge the U.S. government to
enact domestic legislation that incorporates the standards outlined above. We welcome recent
indications that law enforcement officials are increasingly charging traffickers with offenses
appropriate to the serious nature of their crimes, but much remains to be done to improve the
protections and services available to trafficked persons. Such measures are crucial for upholding the
rights of victims and for encouraging them to cooperate in the investigation and prosecution of
traffickers. In particular, we hope that such legislation will address this issue by:

Banning all forms of involuntary servitude and debt bondage as forced labor. U.S. statutory
proscriptions on peonage and involuntary servitude have been narrowly interpreted to include
only those situations in which victims are made to work through force of law or actual or
threatened physical force. This excludes many of the slavery-like practices that Human
Rights Watch has found common in cases of trafficking, in which labor is extracted through
non-physical meanssuch as debt bondage, blackmail, fraud, deceit, isolation, and/or
psychological pressure.

Providing victims of trafficking with access to legal assistance, translation services, shelter,
and health services, and ensuring that all trafficked persons are allowed to remain in the
United States throughout the duration of any civil or criminal proceedings against their
abusers.

Preventing the further victimization of trafficked persons by guaranteeing their immunity
from prosecution for immigration violations or other crimes related to their having been
trafficked, and taking adequate measures to ensure the protection of their physical safety.
Such measures should include opportunities for all trafficking victims who fear retaliation
upon return to their home country to apply for permanent settlement on that basis.

Trafficking in persons is a profound human rights abuse, and women are particularly
vulnerable to this practice due to the persistent inequalities they face in status and opportunity. It
is time for governments to take this problem seriously. Concrete steps are needed to prevent
trafficking, punish traffickers and the corrupt officials who facilitate their crimes, and provide
protection and redress for victims. This is a crucial moment in the fight against trafficking, with
efforts underway in domestic, regional, and international fora to define appropriate state actions. It
is imperative that the United States take advantage of this moment to demonstrate its leadership on
this critical human rights issue.